Re: The Olympic Games

The uniforms for the American athletes have definitely been hit and miss. The biggest miss this year is the women's soccer team. They look like a giant game of "Where's Waldo?" Who's decision was that? Awful.

I like the body suit many of the female swimmers are wearing. Those sheer panels make them much more flattering, without looking tacky or too revealing.

I feel like a dirty old woman for saying it, but Nathan Adrian is so darned cute, I could eat him with a spoon.

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' - Isaac Asimov

I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "... I drank what?"

Re: The Olympic Games

Originally Posted by sweetpea

That's ridiculous. Here in Canada, CTV has Olympic coverage from first thing in the morning straight through the day until 2 pm PT when they break for one hour of news, then back to the games through the evening. We also get hours of coverage on another channel, Sportsnet I believe, that shows many of the lesser known events. By the evening, if you've been watching all day, it might get a little repetitive, but then I just switch to the other channel and watch, say, beach volleyball or water polo, or wrestling, or badminton, or what have you. We literally get hours and hours of coverage, as much as they can cram in a day.

NBC really has dropped the ball in so many ways for the American audience, which is such a shame as the US now stands on the top with the most medals won. I just don't get it!

Re: The Olympic Games

NBC has divided its coverage between all of its other subsidiary networks like MSNBC and Bravo, so if you have access to those stations, you can watch a lot of different sports, but it's a nightmare keeping track of what's on which station when. On top of that, I believe in the first twenty-four hours of the Olympics, they announced that they'd shown over seventy hours of coverage, which obviously means a lot of things were repeated from network to network, and the various NBC stations were actually in competition with themselves, so that if there were two sports on two different networks and you wanted to see them both, you can to choose or tape/DVR for viewing later. Or watch on-line, but if you do that, you're likely missing television coverage of something else. It truly is a mess.

Re: The Olympic Games

Did anyone see the NBC piece on Olga Korbut this morning? It's hard to believe that back in 1972, they really hadn't planned on giving much air time at all to women's gymnastics until Olga captivated the audience in the gym and at home. In fact, one of the announcers said that until that Olympics, he'd never covered a gymnastics meet with more than 200 people in the audience, yet when the Russian women gymnasts toured the U.S. after the Olympics, they sold out Madison Square Garden.

Apparently Olga's coach decided that, given her personality, they were going to design her routines to appeal to the audience, which no one had really done before, and since Olga trained in what is now Belarus and in relative obscurity compared to the rest of the better known gymnasts, no one caught on or really expected what happened in Munich at all, because it went against the USSR traditions that had, in their defense, served them very well on the world stage. They also interviewed Olga herself, who still has that same smile, and she said that when she did her final floor routine, which was the last routine of the gymnastics competition, she felt like "a seven year old playing in the grass...free, like a butterfly" and that she's never, ever forgotten that feeling. It was so nice to hear someone talking about what joy they felt in a performance, even forty years later. She also confirmed that all the smiling, and the tears when she fell apart on the bars in the all around, really were just the way she is about everything in her life, which is probably why people reacted the way they did--because it was all genuine.

I remember the huge media blitz she unleashed, but I hadn't realized how much it changed the interest in, and coverage of, the sport in the U.S., mainly because the 1972 Olympics are really the first Olympics I can remember with a lot of detail, so it seemed to me as if gymnastics had always been a premiere sport in terms of coverage. I guess not, at least not in the U.S. According to Kathy Rigby, Olga's appeal caused a virtual explosion of interest in the sport in the U.S., at least for little girls who suddenly wanted to take gymnastics lessons in unheard of numbers.

After she went to the White House, Russian officials also told her, "Little girl, you have done in a few moments what we have spent years trying to do." People forget how much she changed the image of not just the Russian gymnast but Russians in general for many people.

Re: The Olympic Games

Interesting how FIG rules aren't benefitting US gymnasts: Raisman misses all-around bronze to Mustafina who fell on beam. Wieber misses all-around finals. Now Maroney, best vaulter in the world, loses due to a fall.

Not saying anyone should win with a fall. Just that the rules should function fairly for all competitors.

Re: The Olympic Games

Re: The Olympic Games

Originally Posted by libgirl2

I have to admit that the Olga Korbut piece was interesting despite not getting my tennis medal ceremony.

I assumed they might just save that for the end of the morning broadcast. They've done that for other medal ceremonies too, even for the American winners on which NBC particularly dotes. It's like they want to close on a high note, and there's not much higher a note than a good medal ceremony.